Depending on where you live, your summer has probably been either too hot or too wet so let me take you somewhere wintery instead. Canadian author Heather Fawcett’s recent novel Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023) is set in Ljosland, an invented northern country not unlike Norway. This book is available in most of the usual formats and a sequel, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands is due out early next year (2024).
Professor Emily Wilde is a dryadologist – a scholar who records and studies the Folk (faeries). She is based at Cambridge University but frequently travels to remote parts of the world where the Folk can still be found and observed. Her ultimate aim is to compile a definitive Encyclopaedia of Faeries but in 1909 she sets out, with her boarhound Shadow, on an expedition to Ljosland to document an elusive species of faerie known as the Hidden Ones. Her journal records her arrival in the isolated village of Hrafnsvik which sits between a rocky coastline and a wild forest with mountains behind.
Emily has arranged to rent a small cottage from a local farmer. It turns out to be cold and sparsely furnished but Emily hardly notices because she is so keen to begin her work. Emily isn’t good at noticing people either or interacting with them but she does realize that the locals mock and mistrust her. She is warned against provoking the Hidden courtly fae of Ljosland, who have a fearsome reputation, but carries on with her research. Soon, with the aid of a song and some Turkish Delight, Emily makes contact with Poe, a small member of the common fae who lives on the edge of the forest.
Her solitary life changes with the sudden arrival of her Cambridge colleague, Professor Wendell Bambleby, and a couple of his research students. This charismatic and handsome scholar is popular and successful but Emily has come to suspect that Wendell isn’t human. He is still the closest thing that Emily has to a friend. Wendell declares that he was worried about Em (as he insists on calling her) and has come to help her. The cottage is quickly made comfortable and Wendell charms all the villagers into being more co-operative. Emily is annoyed but living with him in close quarters does give her a chance to investigate Wendell’s true identity.
When they embark on further research together it becomes apparent that something is very wrong in Hrafnsvik. The villagers used to be on relatively good terms with the faeries, largely leaving each other alone, but in recent years there have been some terrible incidents. A young woman abducted by the faeries has returned with her mind permanently damaged and another family are forced to endure a malignant changling substituted for their own child. Emily’s research on local legends suggests that this change has something to do with a story about a Faerie King trapped under a tree beside the Lake of Dancing Stars.
It has always been Emily’s policy not to get involved with the communities she studies but when two local women are kidnapped by the Hidden Ones, she feels guilty enough to intervene and recruits Wendell to help her rescue them. He reveals his frightening true self in the process and Emily is infected by a dangerous enchantment. One intervention leads to another, and Emily becomes far more closely involved with the Hidden Ones than she wished for. Can she ever get back to the human world?
The ingredients of this novel include lashings of wit and charm, a loyal canine companion and a quirky romance so it seems to have been marketed as Cosy Fantasy. Personally I would class it as Dark Fantasy so prepare for some grim events and startling acts of violence. As you might expect from a Canadian author, Fawcett is very good at conjuring up a bleak northern landscape in which humans endure a constant struggle for survival. As the ice and snows of Winter advance, conditions become more and more hostile and yet enticingly beautiful. Part of this is conveyed by ill-prepared Emily’s feeble attempts to keep herself warm. The lessons she is given in how to chop wood for the essential fire in her cottage become an integral part of the plot. There is more than one use for an axe.
The folklore of Ljosland is as bleak as the landscape. For me, one of the great pleasures of this novel is the way that Fawcett has created a whole scholarly discipline – Dryadology – and made it totally convincing. Her heroine records local folktales in her journal and uses footnotes (as any Cambridge-trained scholar would) to refer to a century of theories about the Folk. Many of these Emily dismisses as narrow-minded nonsense. The academic world has always been full of bitterly fought scholarly feuds but Emily’s footnotes also inform us that Dryadologists (like Anthropologists) sometimes come to sticky ends or just disappear. Emily’s research reminded me of pioneering British folklorist Katharine M. Briggs who compiled a famous Dictionary of Fairies. I recommended a Fantasy novel by Briggs – Kate Crackernuts – in January 2018 (the easiest place to find older Fantasy Reads posts is on my author website at https://geraldinepinch.co.uk).
If you imagine faeries to be pretty, sparkly and mainly harmless, think again. Many of the ones in Briggs’ dictionary and Fawcett’s novel are notable for their malice and cruelty. Even little Poe, who can be bribed to give information, has claws that can do serious damage and the changling child is like something out of a Horror film. The Hidden Ones tend to regard humans as little better than animals and treat them accordingly. Emily knows how dangerous the Folk can be but is overwhelmingly curious about them. When she challenges them, Emily only has a few minor charms and a dog who is more than he seems to protect her. Emily’s greatest weapon is her hard-earned knowledge about how faeries think and act.
Emily Wilde is a distinctive and appealing heroine in spite of, or perhaps because of, her faults. Unnervingly honest and prodigiously clever, she has dedicated her life to an arcane field of scholarship in which she feels at home. You admire her for succeeding in a man’s world but notice how isolated she is. Emily has very few practical skills and almost no emotional intelligence. She barely understands her own feelings, let alone other people’s. That needs to change and does so in the course of the novel. Emily learns from the strong women of Hrafnsvik about how communities work together to survive and she learns to trust in her friendship with Wendell. It is a nice irony that Emily, who is human, behaves like a Changling while Wendell, who isn’t, is able to manipulate people because he understands what they expect and want.
The central love story in this novel develops with sudden revelations rather than in slow stages. Faeries notoriously cannot lie (though they frequently mislead) and have no appreciation of human standards of behaviour or beauty. So it seems plausible that eccentric, truth-telling Emily, who isn’t bothered about how she looks or dresses, should attract two faerie suitors. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries has a satisfying story-arc so you could treat it as a stand-alone novel but I’m still looking forward to the sequel. Fawcett learned her craft writing books for children (I’d particularly recommend her The Language of Ghosts) and the discipline that requires shows in her first adult novel. The plot may be whimsical but there isn’t a word wasted. I first read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries on my Kindle and then ordered a hardback copy. For me, this book is a keeper. Until next month….
Geraldine